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Onitsha, Nigeria was once home to the largest outdoor market in West Africa. From the late 1940s through the 1968 destruction of the market building and its renowned bookstalls during the Biafran War, its many Igbo consumers newly literate in English represented a vital reading public. The Onitsha Market Literature digital collection includes examples of the small books and pamphlets that were written, published and sold in and around this famously active marketplace. Scholarly interest in Onitsha Market Literature is wide ranging. The themes and subjects may be simplistic or amusing, but they represent cultural attitudes and the interest of a youthful (evidently mostly male) readership in mid-twentieth century Nigeria. The use of letterpresses and type sold secondhand by missions and government offices allows tracking their use through forensic clues in the type itself (sometimes mixed on a single page or line). The social milieu of the market offers a fascinating launching point for many perspectives surrounding these unassuming publications that in many ways resemble earlier British and American “pulp fiction” popular genres such as chapbooks or “dime novels.”

Further reading

Collins, Harold Reeves. 1968. The new English of the Onitsha chapbooks. Athens: Ohio University, Center for International Studies. LIBRARY WEST General Collection -- DT1.P33 no.1